Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Trisha Yearwood will be the inaugural recipient of CMT’s June Carter Cash Humanitarian Award, as well as performing a new song, on the “CMT Music Awards” telecast, airing live April 7 on CBS.
The singer will get the honor for her philanthropic work, which extends across many charities but most visibly includes two decades of involvement with Habitat for Humanity, which she’s long supported alongside husband Garth Brooks. (They were jointly given the org’s Habitat Humanitarians honor in 2016.) Yearwood will use her first appearance on the annual awards show in five years to premiere “Put It in a Song,” the first preview of a forthcoming album that will be a first in her career, in that it’ll be the first collection in which she co-wrote all the songs.
The new award, named for June Carter Cash, doesn’t mark the first time a member of that country music family has had a CMT honor named after him or her.
In some previous years, the CMT Music Awards have given out a Johnny Cash Visionary Award, first given to Cash himself in 2003 (before his name was tagged on to the title), then to artists such as Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams Jr.
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